AFH Video Studio works with Adobe Youth Voices

Isabel Hibbard is a creative leader in the AFH Video studio. She is currently a senior at Boston Latin School and will be attending a four year college in the Fall.

We were contacted by the Adobe Youth Voices program to participate in their initiative to inspire middle and high school students to express themselves through video and animation. After Jason Talbot, our video studio mentor, attended a seminar for educators, Adobe provided us with $25,000 worth of software to create a final product that illustrates our opinions on issues that affect us. Our objective is to end up with a video that demonstrates the power of technology and to convey a compelling message in a creative way.

As the Artists For Humanity Video Studio, we are excited to use all of the Adobe Premier tools since we are already familiar with similar editing software. The Adobe programs were easy to use and allowed us to experiment with editing techniques that our old software did not provide. After becoming acquainted with the Adobe tools, we focused on choosing a concept and direction for our project. We brainstormed issues that we are faced with everyday in our communities in order to come up with a relatable message for the project. We could all relate to problems that affect teenagers such as the frustration that arises from having heavy responsibilities but not having the freedom of an adult. Teenagers must delicately balance the pressures of family, friends, school, etc. while still trying to figure out their own identity and place in the world. We decided that the most effective way to convey our message was through a theatrical style movie depicting the lives of various teenagers of Boston who deal with the universal issue of the struggle to find opportunities and battle discrimination.

Our process began organically, with most of our meetings revolving around free discussions of our ideas. However, as the project progressed, we focused more on the concrete details, such as writing a script. This portion of the project proved to be the most difficult obstacle we had encountered. We had trouble with the cohesion of the story and connecting all the characters in a believable way. After many edits and multiple drafts of the script, we finally came up with a plot that was both interesting and true to our message.

Currently, we are planning out our shoot dates and locations as well as storyboarding the entire script. We have already picked the actors and are now in the process of rehearsing and reworking any plot gaps in our story. We are excited to continue the film process and can't wait to share the final piece!